Retired Navy Captain, neurosurgeon and local author Buck Rish will be autographing copies of his sixth novel, “A Class Act,” at book stores later this month.

Rish began writing in high school and continued while attending Wake Forest University and during medical school.

“It’s safe to say, writing is a passion of mine,” Rish said with a smile.

Flavored with camaraderie, mystery and adventure, “A Class Act” follows the path of two medical school friends and features everything they see and experience through their careers, including a love triangle.

According to Rish, the two friends fall in love with the same medical artist while at medical school.

“She shares her love intermittently and discretely between the two doctors during medical school, internship, residency training, and their early professional years,” Rish said.

As the two doctors face the challenges of this phenomenal era in medicine, they experience the debacle in health care created by the intrusion of business entrepreneurs and attorneys into their profession. And the love interest of their early years mysteriously haunts their senior years.

“It kind of ends up with a mystery flair,” Rish said. “That’s how I like to write all my books.”

According to Rish, “A Class Act” has to do with the remains of bodies that were never taken care of or properly disposed of. Such was the case in Georgia several years ago, Rish said.

“The woman’s character ends up marrying a Marine Major and dies,” Rish said. “The two medical students, now doctors and older and married to others, went to her funeral and saw the casket go into the ground.

“But years later, one of them was at a surgical symposium to teach and had to pick a cadaver out of the lab for a teaching demo. And the body was hers.”

He added that the man is floored since he saw her buried. He begins to do his own investigation and soon discovers the cremains of hundreds.

With characters in his book that experience romance, mystery and adventure, Rish said he really wanted to tell a story that people would find interesting.

“There’s a tweak at the end that I won’t tell,” Rish divulged. “But it’s a good story and I hope people will enjoy it.”

When Rish retired from the Navy as a Captain, he returned to writing stories rather than for medical journals. He’s written six novels since 1995 and is hard at work on his seventh one.

“The stimulus behind ‘A Class Act’ is my 50th medical school class reunion,” he said. “We realized at the reunion that there was a world of experience in the room we were in with everyone. And at the same time, we ambivalence of what’s happened to health care. At the time when medicine was doing well, health care was depleting all around us.”

Rish said he wanted to touch base on that but wanted to do it by way of a novel.

A Washington resident, Rish enjoys golf and playing the banjo in the Cypress Landing Jazz Band, as well as sailing with his son and three grandsons, which he lovingly refers to as “The Bandits.”

One of his novels, “The Last Mule in Sunrise,” was a top three finalist in the Faulkner Society in New Orleans.

Rish said he hopes people will most importantly enjoy “A Class Act,” and also see the progression that occurred in medicine and health care.

Rish will be autographing copies of “A Class Act” at The Landing Coffee Cafe in Cypress Commons from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 18, and again at I Can’t Believe It’s a Bookstore from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 25. All of his books are available at www.ebooktime.com.